


Love is blind, but then again so am I

by SpaceCaseWriter13



Category: The Tick (TV 2017)
Genre: Blood, Dot puts up with a lot of shit, F/M, Generally I just like Hurting my characters so here we are, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Thinking about disability, gore mentioned, mild swearing, series typical violence, thinking about past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2019-06-28
Packaged: 2020-05-28 13:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19395577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpaceCaseWriter13/pseuds/SpaceCaseWriter13
Summary: When your hands and eyes are cybernetic you think about people and the world around you a little differently. A OverDot one shot where he very nearly says I love you and Dot very nearly says I love you too.





	Love is blind, but then again so am I

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: All credit for Overkill, Dot, Tick, Arthur and the Gang goes to Ben Enlund. A big shout out to Scott Spicer for bringing my murder baby to life, because damn don’t we all love a dark brooding anti-hero (I know I do).

It wasn’t something he thought much about anymore, not the way he had at first. It was a sort of innate habit, developed first of necessity and then out of paralyzing almost overwhelming fear borne from necessity. What it everything goes wrong? Machines break down and when you eyes and hands are cybernetic there were certain realities, certain eventualities that you had to prepare for. Contingencies.

He’d learned first how to function without use of his hands. It was difficult, and inelegant, and even, he’d admit, downright humiliating at times, but he managed. It hadn’t had a choice while they were fitting him for the first generation of prostheses he used now. He’d pushed himself to be independent, so that should it come to it, he wouldn’t have to rely on other people to do things for him. He’d become fairly dexterous with his feet and toes, and learned exactly how useful both elbows and armpits were for grabbing or manipulating most things.

The loss of his eyes...that...that had been more difficult. There was so much more stimuli received from sight and so he’d learned to rely upon his other senses to off set the disability.

For one Rathbone had started working with him as soon as Hobbes had replaced his hands to hone his other senses. As a field operative he could now shoot in the dark with precise and deadly accuracy, thanks to Rathbone’s training before he’d received the cybernetic replacement to his eyes.

However, that training did very little to identify the plethora of people touching and prodding him, doing things to him that he could neither see nor understand. The legion of doctors and nurse with their cold clinical hands and instruments. They all smelled the same at first, distinguishable only by the sound of their voices. Even then, he’d found himself lost in a sea of interchangeable voices and as the days dragged into weeks he’d found ways to distinguish between them, honing what became one of his greatest tools.

His sense of smell.

You could learn a lot about a person by what they smelled like, their profession, their hygienic habits, their eating habits, what sort of weapon they may or may not have on their persons, even on occasion where they lived. That is if you knew what you were looking, smelling, for.

At AEGIS there were four sort of categories that he found people fell into: the bureaucrats, the field operatives, the egg heads, and the supers. All bureaucrats on a basic level smelled of paper, ink and faintly of rubber stamps. In the same way that all field agents smelled of gun smoke, grease, and explosives. The egg heads, astringent rubbing alcohol and depending on which department either electronics or biological matter. Supers each had their own distinctive odors, depending on their power and their costume design.

Rathbone smelled of AEGIS. It made sense, the man was involved in every part every aspect of the organization. The smell that he most strongly associated with Rathbone was gun smoke and peppermint from when the Agent Commander had quit smoking and for a period had chewed nicotine gum to cut the habit. Hobbes, who he had worked most closely with during his refit, smelled like rubbing alcohol, with a hint of motor grease and electronics. Each of his team mates from Perseus squadron had each had a distinctive smell that he could’ve picked out in a dark room blindfolded.

Even now he’d started picking up the distinctive scents of his current team, and dare he call them his new family. Arthur smelled a lot like the paper pushing bureaucrats of AEGIS with the slightest tinge of electronics and plastics from the suit. The Tick...The Tick was so pungent that it was almost hard to breathe around him. He smelled both earthy and synthetic, and the resulting odor was so pungent it was almost sickly sweet.

Dot, Dot on the other hand had surprised him. Most women smelled floral. It was just in their shampoo, or soap, or perfume, or whatever. To be fair to her, and most women for that matter, his only real intimate experience with women had been with Lint who had smelled like an electrical fire.

Dot, by her trade, at least when they’d first met, had smelled like antiseptic, rubbing alcohol, coffee, and chewing gum. Then like gun smoke, beer and bourbon, and then like leather and sweat with a undertone of citrus and lavender with the occasional sandalwood, although that he was almost entirely sure that came from her shampoo and soap.

Each of them different and distinguishable, each of them familiar and so unique it would be impossible to replicate. A voice, a sound, those could be imitated either whole sale or reproduced, but a smell was unique in its composition it was almost like a finger print, and he would know the difference. He would know them, know her sight unseen.

What did he smell like? He wondered. Gun smoke, Foham, and metal perhaps? No. The metallic taste in his mouth, that was just blood, lots of blood.

He blinked, though that did nothing to remove the shroud of blackness that enveloped him. The EMP had disabled his eyes and hands, but of course that had been only moments before he’d been riddled with a half a dozen bullets and then stabbed.

He tried to focus, tried to cut out the static and noise that was threatening to bombard his other senses, and focus on his training, focus on what he knew. There was blood, a lot of it.

His.

There was smoke, and gunfire, and shouting. Someone was dragging him along a corridor, their breathing ragged and drawn. “Stay with me Overkill. We have extract incoming any minute.” It was Dot. He could feel her kneel beside him, her hands moving to remove his protective armor so she could try to staunch the bleeding.

“Overkill?” She called again, her voice steady and firm even at the sound of approaching gunfire.

 _Overkill._ That stupid name, a name he’d chosen almost out of spite, after he’d been betrayed and left for dead. That was the only name she knew him by. _I’m dying. Is that really what I want her to call me when I’m dying?_

 _Focus._ He wanted to scream as his mind continued to wander off. “Dot. Dot you need to get to the transport.” He managed.

“No. I’m not leaving you here,” Dot said, with the slightest tremor in his voice as she leaned in closer to him. Her hair must have fallen from its usual severe pony tail, and she must’ve been quite close because it tickled his nose, and wafted her familiar scent, cutting through the deluge of other stimuli. He wanted to press his face into her hair, hold her close, and just let the rest of the world melt away.

“Come on Overkill, stay with me. You’re going to have to stay awake just a little bit longer.”

Again, with the stupid name. “Esteban.” He corrected weakly.

“What?”

The note of incredulous surprise in her voice made him chuckle a low rough choked chuckle. “My name.” He managed.

“Oh.”

“What? You didn’t think my name was over- Ow! Fuck!” He grimace as she jammed a wad of gauze over one of the stab wounds that was bleeding more profusely than the rest.

She didn’t say anything, but he could feel her tense as she moved to apply firmer pressure on the wound. “Dot?”

“Yes, Esteban.” She pronounced every syllable of his name carefully, almost delicately, as if she said it wrong it might shatter.

He felt his stomach twist as his head began to spin. His words were failing him, escaping him. What was it that he’d wanted to say?

“Esteban?” Her voice was more urgent now, sharper than it had been before. “You’re not allowed to die on me you selfish bastard. Do you hear me?”

“10-4, copy that,” he mumbled, the smell of blood, smoke, and Dot enveloped him and as he wavered in and out of consciousness was only vaguely aware of the voice that surrounded him as he was finally claimed by the blood loss and sheer pain.

*** 

He awoke, as he had so many time before, with a start his heart racing as he mind frantically pieced together all of the incoming stimuli. He could see, he wasn’t being restrained, his hands worked, and he was in an almost unbearable amount of pain. So far as he was concerned this was a net win. Although the fact that he was in an unfamiliar hospital bed, in an unfamiliar medical wing was not altogether reassuring.

Before he could push himself into a sitting position he looked up to see The Tick and Arthur poised at the foot of his bed, ready to leap into action. Arthur had both hands out and was silently but urgently motioning down.

He was in a hospital gown, arms bare, though someone had been kind enough to leave his gloves on. Though that wasn’t why Arthur was motioning. Beside him Dot was slumped in a chair, head resting on the bed beside him. He glanced between Arthur and Dot before closing his eyes and letting his other senses catch up. There was the cold nearly smell of the medical wing, stale coffee, body odor, both his own and Dot’s, gun smoke, fire, and blood. there were the sounds of medical machines beeping in their slow methodical way, and Dot’s even intake of breath.

“Esteban?” Dot moaned as she stirred.

“I’m fine.” He said shortly.

“You weren’t about 36 hours ago.” She answeredas she sat up, her normally tidy hair sticking up in all directions, dark circles under her normally bright and alert eyes. “And you’d be dead if not for Arthur and Tick.”

“And you.” He cut in.

Dot nodded groggily but said nothing.

“You should go get some rest you look like shit.”

“You’re really not one to talk asshole.” She shot back. “I’m supposed to report back to DB with status updates every few hours. You’re stuck with me until you get discharged from AEGIS medical custody.”

He looked up at Arthur and the Tick who both gave him bashful looks. “I take it I’m not allowed to argue.”

“I’d save your strength for another time and place. Trust me on this.” Arthur said glancing meaningfully at Dot.

He took Arthur’s meaning and nodded, his eye lids already drooping shut, his body demanding more rest. A betrayal of the highest order, but if he tried to defy it, he’d also have to fight Dot, and he suspected Arthur and The Tick too. It was a losing scenario and so he’d surrender to it. He turned to Dot who was already repositioning herself in the severe hospital visitor’s chair. “If you’re going to stay, at least get on the bed. That looks painful.”

Dot mumbled something, but obliged, climbing gingerly onto the bed beside him, resting her head just under his left arm.

“We’ll be just outside if you need anything, come on Tick, lets go.” Arthur said, shooing him from the room.

He exhaled, closing his eyes as the door shut behind the duo. He focused on matching Dot’s slow and gentle inhale and exhale as he felt his whole body start to drift away.

“I thought we were going to lose you, Esteban.” Dot said distantly.

“Well you didn’t.”

“I’m glad.”

“I—I—” His words failed him, and rather than fight it burred his face in her hair, holding her as tight as he could manage against him. The smell of her washed over him, bombarding his senses, and he could feel damp tears slip down his face as a feeling of relief overcame him. That verbal confirmation that someone, perhaps more than one someone, cared if he lived or died. That Dot cared if he lived or died.

Was this what love felt like? He couldn’t help but wonder. He couldn’t say that he’d seen much of real love in his life. But perhaps this is what it felt like, sounded like, smelled like. Perhaps he didn’t have to know it when he saw it, but instead it was enough to rely upon his other senses to figure out what it was.

After all love was blind wasn’t it, and so was he.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this Drabble, it may become a part of a mini series of one shots (who knows). Let me know what you think (particularly if there is screaming involved, because I too like screaming)! Kudos and Comments are always welcome!


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